Sunday, April 23, 2006

Harpsichord magic from Don Angle

'I always found his Bach to be scandalously empty of whatever musicality, crammed with fantastic and meaningless inventions. And I'm not mentioning the articulation nor the phrasing' - Harpsichordist Scott Ross on Glenn Gould.

Ross, who gave us the heavenly Scarlatti sonatas that I wrote about recently, was sparing with praise for his peers, although he did acknowledge a debt to Kenneth Gilbert.

But there was one harpsichordist Scott Ross admired unreservedly, and amazingly that player has never recorded any baroque music.

To find out why Ross admired Don Angle (photo above) so much listen to these three samples of his playing -and prepare to be amazed:

* Visit Don Angle's web site viathis link.Audio clips from Don Angle's Harpsichord Magic at amazon.com. Image credit - Trinity Episcopal Church, Tariffville, CT. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot ukIf you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Instruments of extreme beauty

3 comments:

Scott Belyea
said...

A puzzling post, I find.

The relevance of Ross's slagging of Gould escapes me. And the audio excerpts reminded me of a 30-year-old LP I have somewhere of Biggs showing considerably more energy and verve in Joplin on the pedal harpsichord.

i was a personal friend of Scott Ross, and the very reason he couldn't stand Gould's interpretations, was that "when one's so far out, you'd need a 747 to get him back". Glen Gould's Bach is just no longer Bach. You may like it, that's your right, just as well as you like Power Biggs' glitter, but if you were to play Th. Monk on a church organ as it were church music and a gregorian rhythm, I doubt it would have much to do with Monk's music...